The Sevan Podcast - #284 - Jake Hagel

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Jake once weighed over 400 lbs. Docter's have suggested by losing the weight he has, he added 30 years to his life expectancy. In the first six months, he stopped drinking soda and regular Gatorade and lost 46 pounds.  He is in a CrossFit affiliate every day. This is CrossFit.  Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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you're supposed to say you never get triggered what are you talking about you're all i was just coming in here my wife it's like she's psychic it's 7 a.m here and so i'm coming in here and she's like everything good i'm like yeah what the fuck you mean everything inside what the fuck you mean everything's good of course everything's good you know oh so what do you but i answer like this what do you mean sweetheart she goes well are you tired and like i didn't sleep or shit last night i'm fucking exhausted you're just so excited to have me on today yeah i'm like what are you talking about i'm fucking fired up the fucking back i just lie i'm sure i just lied jake what's up man what's going on savannah where are you i am in mazelan in new jersey at

rdt fitness in my in the owner's office right now oh that's cool yeah he's a good dude um is that new electronic someone got behind you sitting in that box is that like headphones or something it's one of those vertical mouses oh no oh i don't know what that is you have to talk to him about that i have no clue i'm a sucker for like electronic boxes you're like you're a sucker for all boxes i am a sucker for like electronic boxes. You're a sucker for all boxes. I am a sucker for all boxes. You want to know what happened though? What's funny about my addiction to boxes of all sorts, when I had kids, I used to get so excited when mail would come for me.

And then I had kids and like, it didn't even matter. It could be a brand new camera came in the mail and it would just sit there on the counter for like days. I was like, wow, I my kids have become my number one favorite thing. You don't have kids, right? No, no kids for me. But you have a new puppy. I do love kids. You did get a new puppy.

I did. Are we going to just start seeing a ton of puppy videos? You're going to see a couple here and there. I'm a little obsessed. I can't lie. He's my little buddy so you know how like a it's amazing how a little puppy can turn like a grown man into like a little bitch he has done so completely and kind of like i guess that's how your kids kind of had that effect on you pretty good so my before we had uh my wife and i had got that we had three great Danes and then they eventually all died.

And then we went a year without a dog. And then we got this little Chihuahua Basenji mix like a year later from the shelter. And it was ridiculous. My, I knew that we needed to have kids because my wife and I would like feed him a cracker and then hold each other and be like, Oh my God, he's so cute. The way he eats that cracker. Oh my God. I'm like, Oh, something's wrong with us. It's a hundred percent the truth. I,. I anything he does now, I get like I start texting my parents like, guess what I taught my dog to do today.

Jake, Jake went from 386 to 212. Yeah, I. So like the highest I ever saw on the scale was 416. But when I started this journey, um, 386 was when I stepped on the scale for this journey. And, uh, my lowest I got to 208 and now I hover anywhere between 235 to 240. So I'll do the math very quickly in my head. Your biggest weight swing was 208 pounds. Yes, sir. I lost that human. Did you do that on purpose?

Exactly fit half? No. No, I never even thought about that. No. I never thought about it. Yeah, I did lose half myself, I guess, at one point. Yeah, you cut yourself in half. There's this whole generation out there.

How old are you? I just turned 30. Yeah, there's this whole. I was like, what the fuck's going on with the audios because I don't have my headphones on. There's this whole generation out there that will put on so much weight that they do – they change their body in such a way that it's forever. Yeah, it's happened. I did it. Yeah. I did it.

Yeah, go on. It's forever. Yeah. It's happened. I did it. I did it. And yeah. Yeah. Go on. I just, I think a lot of the issue is what you talk about is just a lack of knowledge of what the hell's going on, but yeah, continue with the skin.

I know that's where you're getting at with the extra skin. And I've never been the one to like hide it. Yeah. If you're on my Instagram now, you'll see, I've talked about it multiple times. Till to this day, I'm very the one to hide it. Yeah, if you're on my Instagram now, you'll see I've talked about it multiple times. Till to this day, I'm very self-conscious about it. Going to the beach a lot of times, like I'm with my friends, my girlfriend and everyone

down there, like you can take off your shirt, Jake, like you're in shape now. I'm still like, well, I got I always like for my research, I was like, no one wants to see some dude's extra skin. And but like, I know those are the ones that love me and they're telling me to take the shirt off. But, yeah, to this day, it messes with my mind. I had no idea you're doing it in the process. You know, you just. I'm I'm I don't think you ever I mean, don't let me argue your limitations. I don't think you ever – I mean don't let me argue your limitations.

I don't think you ever get over it because I hate taking my shirt off too. I hate it. I cannot – I have – I look at everyone's body around me, and I'm like, man, everyone has a nicer body than me. And I'm still chubby, and I still have rolls. But I fake it now because I have kids i like fucking just like complete i run down there and just rip my shirt off and then like i'm trying to hide every insecurity i can because i don't want them to like mirror it without without being over compensating and i do a shot in the car before i get to the beach

that definitely the liquid courage definitely helps me too um i seriously i'm i but i'm not joking about that i'll have like i'll get down to the beach and i'll have like a beer or two and then be like okay i get it yeah 100 i get it have you ever thought about the extra skin actually being an inspiration for some that see you yeah and then that's the and that's the plus side about it matt is that i hear all these people that are they see it and like jake thank you for putting this out there because for me this is a struggle of mine and for me about my journey and i i figured real early on that i wanted to be completely open about what i was going through um because I feel like there's not enough of that

out there like you see it once in a while on um like tv shows biggest loser and stuff like that but when do you see an everyday person you know go through these struggles and and that's all I am is just an everyday person who finally one day had enough and I decided to make a change and I think so much so many people are scared to make that change and they see it like if they follow my my uh journey they've seen that like yeah there's been ups and downs there's been everything in between but if you can see the person the happiness I have now compared to back then when I was faking it and trying to prove to everyone I was happy and now it's just a genuine happiness um that's where I want people to get out of this because I know how I felt when I was overweight and depressed and sad every single

day when I look in the mirror and I want people to know that like, don't have to live like that anymore. And it's, it's not a crazy, like, um, secret you guys talk about every day. Don't, don't eat sugar. Don't eat refined carbs, simple things. Um, I mean, so when I started this journey, I, first thing I said to myself, so I don't know if you know my whole story. I don't know. I don't know. Shit. I'm really excited to hear it though. Like disclaimer to everyone out there. Cause this is good. I'm sure let's get some people like, Oh, he did it the easy way.

I did have the gastric by a sleeve surgery. So if anyone doesn't know what that is, it cut out a portion of your stomach. But it's not permanent. This stomach can eventually come back to normal. I would say now after three years, I'm pretty much back to normal so I can eat whatever and however I like. But before that even started, so you have to go through a whole insurance process with this to get it insured for

process. And it's a six month process. So with that process, all I did for the first six months, they said, you can't gain any weight for insurance to approve this. You just can't gain any weight, Jake. So that 386 comes from the first time I went into the doctor's office, got onto the scale and said, okay, Jake, you're 386 for the next six months. We're going to evaluate you, see if you're eligible. Number one thing you can't do is you can't gain weight. So in my head, I'm like, all right, I'm not going to go through this whole process. I'm just going to make minor changes. I should be all right.

So I stopped drinking soda and Gatorade. That's all I did. And in those six months, I lost 46 pounds. Holy shit. What did you replace it with? Water? Yeah, water pretty much or Gatorade Zero. Okay.

Those are my two go-tos. Every time I would go to the doctor's office every month, I'd be like, what the hell is going on? I'm like starting to think I'm sick because I'm telling you, I did not change anything about my eating. It was purely, I cut out sugar drinks. What is that's about? So you were losing seven pounds a month by, um, but by the way, we were just talking about this on the show last night. Most people think that they need to add

something to themselves to be healthy. you think that and i mean about anything you are 99.999 wrong if you're putting zip medication on to get rid of your zits you're wrong if you're taking an injection to uh uh make yourself stronger healthier you're wrong 99.9 of the time if you're adding something you're that's the red flag that you're going the wrong way to make yourself a better person like uh throw away that big old box of shit that you've been saving you're a better person not save more shit you don't need to take probiotics until you're done cutting out all the sugar out of your diet first then start taking probiotics okay sorry i get on my horse okay that's amazing that's a great that's great i wonder um was it was it like seven pounds a month or was like the first month like 20 pounds

do you remember i i honestly don't remember i just i wonder how long you could have kept the first month was a bigger jump because i remember like the last month I had only lost like another three pounds, I think, going into the surgery. So that last check-in, I was like, I lost another three pounds. I'm really biased. I really hate the surgery. I don't blame you. I mean, I understand. I'm not hating either.

I'm not hating either. I'm so glad you did it. But I'd like, I just, I'm so biased. Go on, go on. So knowing what I know now and what I've learned through CrossFit and working with nutrition, do I think I could go back without the surgery and do exactly what I did? Yes. Now I a hundred percent, but seven on the problem is there's so many people out there that won't, that can't get past that first week or first two weeks of a diet. And what this surgery does is kind of forces you to get through that first month because, and what that first month. What do you mean by force? What do you mean by force?

What's that? What do you mean by force? Because do you mean by force? What's that? What do you mean by force? Because, because you just aren't hungry. So you get that. So like for the first month you're, I mean, for the first two weeks you come off that you're on a completely liquid diet. So right then and there you can have like Gatorade zero and chicken broth for two weeks. So right now you're going to lose, you know, I think I lost almost 30 pounds in the first two weeks. Not saying that's healthy or great knowing what I know now, but what it did was like, it sparked that in me, like, holy shit, let's go. Like, this is cool.

I like seeing that, like for this is the first time in how long I've been under 350. So let's, you know, let's get this rolling. Then the goal was, okay, you get to go under 300. And let me ask you a question real quick. Do you just do that the first two weeks because you're not actually hungry? Or do you do that because it's the rules or some combination of like, what is the actual surgery? Like mentally, I was hungry, but like physically you can't. And like, yeah, it's the rules. They tell you like there's, but there's plenty of people out there. You read about that, go and start eating again because you can, they say that you can, if you eat, you know, bigger foods, you can rupture, I guess the staples that are back on your

stomach and stuff like that. That's why they tell you to keep away for the first two weeks. So it's, so it's a three part thing. One, you're not as hungry because you just had the surgery and they did something to keep away for the first two weeks so it's so it's a three-part thing one you're not as hungry because you just had the surgery and they did something to your stomach two you're super motivated because you've already gone through the six months and they had the surgery and three you're scared to fucking death you'll fuck something up and pop out a suture and i'm not i'm gonna ask you a question people are gonna think i'm joking but i'm not joking did you ever think about like just doing meth for a month like get on fucking drugs and like i thought about any fucking way possible to lose weight

like yeah i like wanted it so bad for so long but it was just like and i would start like here and there doing diets and lose 30 40 pounds or not even i don't think i'd ever lost that much i'm lying so probably 20 pounds but still like i would only last two weeks and then you know any excuse to like fall off the bandwagon get off the horse like i would take and this uh the surgery kind of forced me that i couldn't get off the i couldn't get off the horse you're on that you're strapped into that damn horse whether you like it or not. I, um, I know what you mean by think of anything. Cause there, I mean, I don't do it so much anymore, but there were times in my life where I would be

like, okay, I need to lose 10 pounds. And I would seriously come up with, I mean, I wouldn't actually do these things, but I come up with harebrained ideas. Okay. I'm just going to walk for three days. I would hear that thought come in my brain and I'd be like, okay, that's a viable option. I'll start walking on Friday and I'll, you know, walk till Sunday and I would just drink water. for three days. I would hear that thought come in my brain and I'd be like, okay, that's a viable option. I'll start walking on Friday and I'll walk till Sunday and I would just drink water.

You know what I mean? I mean, just like I would hear the, I would hear that, that idea to lose such a good, such a good idea in your head. And just the next morning you're like, like give me a cheeseburger. Shit. I mean, still do this.

So I, I, every Saturday night I go to bed, I stop eating. Shit. I mean, still do this. So I fast. Every Saturday night I go to bed. I stop eating. I don't eat again till Monday morning. But recently, recently, you're too young. Recently, I tried to just do some intermittent fasting also. So like to stop eating at 6 p.m. I couldn't do it.

I fucking failed. I mean, I'll try again, but I failed. I was like, next thing I know, I'm fucking eating at 10 o'clock at night. There's like a whole cantaloupe. It isn't crazy. Like everything, you know, about nutrition, all this stuff, we still try this crazy shit just because we're mentally so fucked with our, I know I am, but like, I can openly admit that and talk to my nutritionist about it and tell him what I want to try different

things. And he'll just be like, how are you performing in the gym? i'll be like well i just hit a pr yesterday he's like so then what are you complaining about i'm just like i don't know i don't like the way i look in the mirror you know it's right um you do have a very nice face by the way a nice facial hair stefan you look great do you ever fast yeah i like i said for over a year now i i go 30 hours 30 to 36 hours a week without eating. And I want to tell you something. It's the greatest fucking thing ever. I don't recommend it for anyone who's young. But once you start getting into your forties, it has, I cannot tell you how, like, I woke up this

morning and I didn't eat all day yesterday. And I woke up this morning, just had a huge avocado. And I, I mean, I feel, i slept like shit last night um because i drank too much coffee the day before but man do i feel fucking great fasting all my inflammation goes away so like i like my my clothes fit me isn't it weird too when you see people jake who have like nice bodies like my wife has an insane body and then she'll be like and she'll watch her like put i'll be just in the bedroom and she's putting on her bathing suit and she'll be like does do i does this look okay and i can't even i can't tell her how good it looks because i would have to like fucking start jumping up and down and get a bullhorn like jerk a load off on it's like i can't even fucking tell

you how great you look i can't i just have to be like yeah you look great but i'm really inside i'm like fucking exploding my girlfriend's the same way. She has a six pack abs, not an ounce of fat on her body, except in her butt. And yeah, like, I think I need to lose a pound. I'm like, Kylie, come on. Like you are. I'm like, you just take off your shirt and immediately I'm. Yes.

You know, yeah, it's crazy. But I get it because at the same time, like she'll look at me and be like, why are you complaining about it? And I'm like, look at that. time like she'll look at me and be like why do you complain in a valley and i'm like look at that i'm like look at me i'm fat but like and then there's times where like i have to reel it back and be like jake you used to dream about being this guy right now like a dream yeah really dream but now and still i beat myself up about it just because i push it down i don't tell her because i hate it no i push it all down because i i hate it when she does it so like i never will say to her like i overcompensate you know what i mean like i'll walk like all the way across naked do a load of wash and walk back just

to be like fuck you i'm fine with myself even though like i'm not but but i was i was never unhappy when i hear you say you were unhappy, I was never depressed about it. I could put on a shirt and be like, fuck, the world's great. You know, as long as we're not going to a pool party on the stove. Yeah, well, you didn't have to worry about like chairs breaking underneath you on a daily basis. You know what I mean? It's different. I'd love to hear some of those stories, by the way, and laugh at you.

If you have any, you could tell. i've broken some chairs in my day you and me like if i went to a wedding and saw like those white plastic chairs yeah i'm standing in the back because i don't want to make a scene for this wedding um i mean i fought i broke a metal chair in high school i'll never forget my junior year in gym class like sitting there and bended the the damn leg on the on the metal chair leaning back in it and even then like does the whole class start laughing i mean i know they're not laughing at you they just it's just a it's just like it's it's laurel and hardy shit right it's like three stooges shit and like i was literally like right next to a couple of my best friends so obviously they just started pounding me right then and there and let me have it.

And like, I've always been good with that. It led it. Like, I've always been the first one to joke about me being fat. So that like, I made it seem like if anyone wanted to make fun of me, you couldn't make fun of me.

Cause I was already making fun of myself. I was one of those guys. I was the funny guy, you know, put the jokes on me, but I'm going to put the jokes right back on you. And you know, I'm going to come five times harder. Cause that's how I have to defend myself because I'm the fat

guy type of scenario. How did that happen? How do you, um, I saw pictures of your dad, your dad's not fat. How did you get fat? And, and, and one more thing I'd like to throw in there to kind of be one of the themes. What's crazy though we say all this but it's the norm now fat people are the norm it is and i i it's funny you say that because i was talking to my girlfriend we just went to disney on the beginning of january i was gonna ask you about disneyland i heard it's crazy um and i literally was saying to her i was like i verbatim i was like i was like you know savannah always talks about just looking around looking at people and the fatness in the world i was like if he ever came to disney world he would shit himself yeah some people have told

me that a few years ago they're like dude you better not go to disneyland you'll explode oh you'd be you just be well uh yeah you would you would just sit there on a bench the whole day and just judge and i wouldn't blame you because it's bad and like you know what's do you know what's interesting though i don't find obese people unattractive like i'll be with like i i don't find um i i'm more like mesmerized like a little kid like how the fuck did that happen how do you do stuff I have trouble washing my ass and I'm 155 pound man. I wouldn't even tie my shoes. Like I would, once I got a new pair of shoes, I just put knots on the end of the shoelaces.

That way I would, cause I would get out of breath bending down the time I could do it. And I was like, I was a pretty athletic fat guy. I used to call myself a fat leap. Cause I would just, because I was, I was pretty good at sports. Even in high school, I was the starting pitcher for the baseball team. No bullshit.

At 300 pounds, I was the starting pitcher for the baseball team. I was a lineman. I wrestled here and there, but I was very athletic. That was part of what drove me nuts as far as being fat. It was like, what could I do if I was actually, you know, in shape, like skinny, like my friends or built like my friends, what could I do? And that was something that haunted me. Um, yeah, big time. Yeah. I think I look back, I was just a pussy. I was so afraid of, I like, I didn't want to sweat. Like I was afraid of sweat. And I always think, man, what, I wonder how different I would have been as a kid if I wasn't afraid of that stuff. I was big from the moment I was brought into this world.

I was 12 pounds, 24 inches born. So I came out with a driving permit pretty much. And from then on, I can always remember even like never, like even as a kid, never being like fat, but being very very solid like be weighing more than all my friends um so when i started realizing the whole weight thing was when i got into um you know little league football and i guess i was seven or eight and they have a weight limit and i remember being like the first year like three pounds over the weight limit so at like eight years old i'm going on my first diet ever.

Wow. Wow. Do you remember what that weight limit was? 101. Okay. 101 pounds. I do. I'll never forget it.

And then the next year, I came in and I was 12 pounds over the 101 limit. And the way it works is like 7 to 8 is 101. Then you go like 9 and 10, and you get to like 125. And, like, the weight limits go up as years go on. It's crazy that you still remember that. Yeah. Well, and then, like, I got into coaching football after high school. So I kind of was still involved.

So I remember that a little bit. But my weight escalated so quickly in that a little bit, but I got, but my weight escalated so quickly in those years that by the time I got to like the varsity when you're seventh and eighth grade. So I guess what? You're 13, 14. I was way out too far out of the weight limit range. I think the weight limit was like one 60. And at that time I was weighing 200 pounds. So like there was no chance of me dropping 40 pounds for the season to be able to play.

Were you heartbroken? Like, your parents would go to sign you up and you're just too big? I was and I wasn't. It's funny you ask that. Like, looking back now, I used to make it seem like I missed it so much. But in the back of my mind, I'm like, I hated practicing. I hated, you know, the extra running, but I loved being under the lights. I love game day. And, um,

you know, being the big guy for the years before that, when I could make weight, it was a little bit easier for me because I was always a bigger guy on the field. You know what I mean? So like, I loved, so Saturday nights getting under the lights and being able to push guys around. And I really didn't have to practice that hard because I was just a bigger dude. Yeah.

And then with everyone, you see that. There are these kids that are always great when they're younger, but then they're just great because of natural abilities, and they don't work on those abilities. By the time you get to high school, all the other athletes catch up to you and pass you because they're the ones working hard and uh in a way that's kind of what happened to me um i just never wanted to work hard i was lazy it was pure laziness to be honest with you i i would closet eat my parents weren't bad parents like yeah aren't

you supposed to like aren't you don't you aren't you supposed to eat because like your parents got divorced or um a girl made fun of you or like something something aren't you supposed to like – aren't you supposed to eat because like your parents got divorced or a girl made fun of you or like something – aren't you supposed to like – isn't that why you get fat? Like I really had no reasons to – Just bad habits. Bad habits. This interview is over. We're not going to get anything good. We're out.

I'll tell you all the good habits coming up soon. But yeah, it was just... So Capri Suns, were you allowed to drink those as a kid? I was allowed to, but it's funny. My dad, he does the road biking, the Lance Armstrong type bike. He's very into that. He's been doing that for 20 plus years now. That's, that's his thing. And, um,

Like he's got the spandex, he's got a nice bike. He hangs it in the garage. You're not allowed to touch it. Yeah. He's got one of those $7,000 bikes, you know? Okay. Yeah. It goes, like it goes in our living, in the living room. My mom used to always complain as a kid, but that bike was staying in the living room. Yeah. Yeah. I dig it. I approve. I approve i approve i i mean looking back now i did too and um i guess art those bikes are art they're amazing i mean you can pick it up with your pinky it's

freaking um he actually got me into it for a little bit then i got more in the crossfit but we'll get i saw you i saw you in some spandex on your instagram i gave it i mean you can finally wear you got to put it on right sure yes um but as for like my mom my mom was also always in shape always like worked out with like a trainer or went to the gym um but i was her baby and i could just bat those eyes and get what i wanted from her type of thing. And she gave in and not because it was because she loved me so much and she did nothing wrong. Like she was great. But those were like the times I would get like the little extra treats and stuff like

that from my mom. But at the same time, I, they never had bad things. We never had soda in the house. The only time there was soda was when like we would have like a barbecue in the summer, you know what I mean? And just have people over and people would leave stuff. They never kept soda in the house. Overall, they're great examples as far as eating. My mom and dad both eat great.

They don't eat a lot of bull crap, a lot of bullshit. My dad's a meat and potato guy. But he also is the type that goes to work all all day then comes home and will work out in his garden or putting deer bait out he's a hunter so like he'll you know he's always active and he's until he doesn't stop until he sits down his chair for the night and then that's it right so he was he could eat his meat and potatoes but he was always working biking in the summer you know saturdays were his you know 40 miler daysmiler days, Sundays his 70-miler days. And then Tuesday, Thursday, he'd always have a bike ride too.

Four days a week, just long bike rides. Yeah. That was his thing. And my mom, like I said, always working out. So they were good examples. But there would be things in the house that I could just go and eat extra of at midnight. And then, you know, eventually get to the age where you can start, you know, they're at work in the house that I could just go and eat extra of at midnight and then you know eventually get to the age where you can start you know they're at work in the summer and I can order

pizza to the house because I'm learning you know I got to that age where I don't need my parents to do that for me anymore and would sneak the pizza boxes out in the trash before they got home and right I need a whole pizza to myself you know i was nothing i was before dinner before dinner oh yeah gary roberts um i made this series called killing the fat man and gary told me that to be as big as he was and i don't think he was as big as you like he would like what you had some of the things you have to do is you have to like go out to mcdonald's get a big mac right before dinner eat it in the car and then come home and then have dinner or if you're going to go to someone's house and eat you always eat a meal before so you don't show them how much you're eating or you eat half a gallon of ice cream and then you know someone's going to find

out so you just eat the whole thing and then go to the store and buy buy a new one and replace it just like all these things i'm like wow it really is food really is a drug because all the behaviors those are all drug addict behaviors right like you drink your mom your mom's vodka so you fill the water back up with um bottle up with water you smoke your roommate's weed you kind of fluff up some other weed try to make it look like you didn't smoke it you know it's just all that it's just all the were you ever suicidal yeah yeah i uh all around way all around weight like fuck this is never i can't do this anymore just around weight loneliness no one feeling like no one wanted me like feeling like i was a part of things because you know because i was the guy that everyone could go to for things

because i i was so scared to say no to a friend because what if I lost that friend? You know how hard it is for a fat guy to make friends? That's what I would think. I don't want to lose these friends. In this process of losing weight, I've lost friends because I finally realized my own worth. Some friends were taking advantage of me type of stuff and uh you just i've learned so much in this process but you don't learn those things unless you go

through those hard times and understand like and feel as low as you do so like there's some days when like i'll feel low now we all do like there's moments where like i'm just like oh this sucks and then like it's real easy for me to snap back out of it because i get to go back to the way i used to felt and like i said earlier in the show like i really am living what i used to dream about so yeah um do you ever dream that you're big again do you ever like have a dream in your in your 400 pounds and you wake up you're like oh fuck yeah it used to happen earlier on in not so much anymore but definitely earlier on in the weight loss it was uh it was actually actually pretty

frequent like i would say the first six months all the time just waking up like just thinking this is all it wasn't true but obviously it happens um it was when i used to when i quit smoking cigarettes it was like that even like a year after i quit then all of a sudden i'd have a fucking dream that i was smoking again and i would be so bummed in my dream i'd be like fuck i got i'm still smoking and then i wake up and be so happy yeah i used to smoke cigarettes too i get that i was so like when i told you i was trying to do everything to kill myself yeah smoking's kind of a good way to lose weight not for me for me it was like i would smoke and like because the taste in my mouth i didn't like i would have to go grab like a chocolate milk to get the taste

out of my mouth it was so stupid um yeah those are nightmares you're right dan and it's they weren't nightmares um but so go. You talk about my intake. I almost want to take you through a daily day of what fat people used to eat. Please. I like telling this because people are just like, what the fuck? So I remember all my way to work, I would stop at McDonald's. Where did you work? I worked for this company called Universal Supply. They sell windows, siding roof roofing

okay but i said it does rain gutters rain gutters yeah stuff like that exactly i love rain gutters so on my way to work i would um stop at mcdonald's and my go-to breakfast was two sausage burritos. I would get four hash browns. I would get a sausage, egg, and cheese on a bagel. And then a large Dr. Pepper. And what I would do was I would eat two hash browns and two sausage burritos before I got to work. That way, when I walked into work, I just had my two hash browns and my sandwich and act like it was my normal breakfast every morning, like, oh, this is all I'm eating. But meanwhile, I'd already just put, you know, X amount of calories in my body. And then as the morning would go on, you know, with that kind of work, we always had like vendors come in with donuts and stuff like that.

So it'd be nothing to have donuts or soft pretzels dropped off and easily going to get two or three of those donuts, soft pretzels, same thing, two or three. More soda? Yeah, soda all day and Gatorade. Like, you know, the 32 ounce gatorades yeah i would probably drink a minimum a minimum of six of those a day why get why gatorade there's nothing even fun in there except sugar like why not uh soda so you can get caffeine too just have it i just love gatorade gatorade is like my like one definitely one of my additions that was probably like one of the harder things to give up. But then now I can't,

I can't tell you the last time I probably three years since I've had an actual Gatorade since I, since that surgery. Were you ever a Diet Coke guy? Yeah, I actually just started, I stopped drinking it recently because it was getting out of control. Yeah, I would drink like 12 a day for years.

Yeah, I was having like three or four a day and my girlfriend kept on getting on me about it. And actually, after Disney, I told her like, all right, I'm going to only have Diet Cokes when we go out to dinner and sit down for dinner. And that's only like three or four times a month. So that's what I've limited myself to now. But, yeah, it's funny. Like you said, addictions are addictions. And no matter if it's ones that are bad for us or good for us, we end up getting hooked on something somehow. Just the way my brain ticks, I guess. Was the Gatorade the hardest thing to quit?

Yeah. Because it was so easy to consume and it's such a daily habit. Yeah. At first, the Gatorade was definitely the hardest. Just drinking water or the Gatorade Zero, it sucked at first. But when I first started, I really got on the water kick for three weeks. That way, when I went to Gatorade Zero, it would taste better. I tried to trick my mind.

That's smart. I do that with a lot of things. What would you eat for lunch? I never bought lunch. I always bought my lunch. it would be, we had this place close by that I like to order from a lot. I would get a bowl of clam chowder, cheesesteak and cheese fries and a soda. Damn. It's crazy that there's, and now now looking back there's things on the menu

and you're just like you look at them and you're just like that that's just that's just obesity making like anytime like there's just i it's crazy now going into a grocery store compared to like when i went into a grocery store 30 years ago i just look at stuff and i'm like that's just that's just pure that's just life. That's just life shortening. Like just eat that. I put the, get incorporate that into your habits and your life gets shorter. There's certain things like I just refuse to ever like try to eat again. Like as far as like sandwiches, I, I think since the last three years I might've had,

I maybe had two sandwiches and like, that was because I like, that's what I had to eat at the time, I maybe had two sandwiches. And that was because that's what I had to eat at the time. There was nothing else. Because you just don't fuck around with bread anymore. Yeah. I try to stay as far away from bread as possible. Here and there, I'm not going to say I'm – but in the first year and a half, I didn't have a single slice or anything like that. And here and there, it would be maybe like a little piece of sourdough or a piece of wheat toast with my eggs type of thing but i try no sandwiches no sugar drinks i still

to this day do not drink any sugar drinks whatsoever yeah bread's bullshit i had a friend tell me that in high school i thought it was we don't need it you don't need to own your sandwiches you eat your i can always say that you get the burger for the damn burger. Yeah, the bread is awesome, but people just – a lot of people don't like making that sacrifice. We're so accustomed in America to just have bread and every freaking meal. You definitely don't get both. And that's the crazy part. You definitely don't get the – you don't get milkshakes. So the first thing you do is you have to cut out the milkshake that's just there's just no excuse

for that yeah and then you have to either choose to go in there and get fries and fucking ruin your life or go in there and get the hamburger you cannot do both you cannot do the bread and the fries it it's um it's like it's like walking backwards a steps. It's so crazy. It's so crazy. I hadn't gone to a fast food place in I don't know how many years, let's say 15 years. And then one of my friends at CrossFit loved going to fast food places. And I would order, but I would just take off the top bun like every time. Like, okay, if I'm going to eat a Jack in the Box, and it was so effective.

I'm not suggesting anyone do that, by the way. But the bread was clearly made out of sugar, and the difference between eating it with both pieces of bread and with the top piece off was like night and day. Like I would have a crash if I ate both pieces of bread. And then to think that people ate fries too, nuts. Nuts to me. That's what I think a lot of it comes down to is because like, even though I was eating those things and I knew it like mentally, I know it's not like great for me, but I also

didn't realize how bad it was for me. And I think that's such a, I didn't realize it either. Yep. I think that's just America in general. We don't, a lot of people just don't know what they're actually doing to their bodies. America in general, we don't, a lot of people just don't know what they're actually doing to their bodies. And it's just like, well, I'd rather be happy than like, you know, I'm going to die happy. I'm like, you're going to die early. No. Yeah. You're not going to die happy. Yeah. And you're not happy in my mind. I always thought to myself, like, I'll be lucky to make

40. And I knew that, but I wasn't doing shit about it. That's scary. It got to the point where it's like, let's try to expedite this process. And like, when you asked me earlier, if I was like suicidal, it wasn't almost like a, I wanted to kill myself right there. But like, I got to the point where I knew what I was doing. And so then I was like, all right, if you're never going to change, like let's hurry this the hell up and like get really unhealthy. going to change like let's hurry this the hell up and they get really unhealthy so like i would come home and i was living with my parents at the time and so for dinner would be i would come home eat a

snack whether that be you know go get a bag of chips and throw some chips on a plate and dump some cheese on it throw it in the microwave and call it nachos and go to my room and eat that and then hear mom say all right dinner's ready have two or three servings of that and then two hours later go make myself like a frozen personal pizza or go to we have like what's called wawa's out here like a convenience store and uh it's like a 7-eleven type thing go to there and grab you know a pint of ben and jerry's and damn on the way home i would grab like a uh not on the way home but as i would leave wow i would have a ice cream cake too and i would eat like the ice cream not an ice cream cake what the hell they call like whatever it's just like a regular bar yeah eat that on the way home and

then walk in with my ice cream like i'm having ice cream tonight yeah i just had you know what i mean like that was pretty much my daily routine of how i ate so i was probably just yeah it's just drug addict behavior it's so interesting it's what i was accustomed to doing it's like i couldn't tick right if i didn't have certain things because that's like i didn't if i didn't couldn't stop at mcdonald's or i was i woke up late like my whole day was ruined that i couldn't have my mcdonald's in the morning type of thing you know i was late to eat not to work so how come espn body issue never asked crossfit athletes pose i know they had katrin david's doter on there and you don't want to get me started about that but she's so proud that she posed naked on there. So you can feel free to go,

go to your Apple TV, look up, you can watch the behind the scenes of her. Would you be proud of me if I posed naked? Yes. Very proud of you. Did anyone not want you to lose the weight? Is there,

is there anyone like, like, like people close to you, like your mom, was she like worried about you? Like, Oh, you're not eating enough.

And you're like tripping. You're like, what are you doing? I'm trying to fix myself. But like people around you don like your mom was she like worried about you like oh you're not eating enough and you're like tripping you're like what are you doing i'm trying to fix myself but like people around you don't want you to change even people who love you i don't think anyone didn't want me to lose weight my mom had reservations about the surgery 100 sure and my dad did at first and then he kind of got to the point where he was like you know what like if you're this is gonna take he's i just want you to be healthy like he's that's what my dad always just wanted me to be healthy from the time I was a kid he was always he was the hard one on me he was the one that would make me cry and like say like would let me know that I am overweight and now looking back on it it's because I know he just wanted me son to be healthy and for me to live longer and he was

giving me that tough love which not like at the time I'm like oh my dad's an asshole I can't believe he's making me cry he's making my life miserable no he wanted to make my life better and I just you're an immature kid you don't understand that then and now looking back I'm like I'm like fuck if I ever have to have that conversation if if I have a child one day, like that's a hard conversation to have. I give my dad a lot of credit for like pulling me aside and being able to do that. And I love him for it now because I always sat in the back of my mind. It was always something like I want to make my dad proud. You know, you always want to make your dad proud.

You know, you always want to make your dad proud. And for the longest time, I feel like I wasn't because I was – because I knew, like, he wanted me to be in shape and I wasn't. You know what I mean? I knew that's what he wanted more than anything. And I think that kind of, like – I created my own depression by, like, my own depression by like my own thinking, like thinking that my dad saying those things was what's wrong with me. And when in reality, it's like, what was going to make me better?

You know what I mean? Like I was putting myself, I was so down on myself. It wasn't him doing that. Like I just made him seem like the enemy when in reality, like I knew what i wanted so i was like just using him as the scapegoat when reality is it was me like blaming him you know in a sense yeah like almost felt like but met like i i i've scared like almost never saying this because i don't want him to feel like i have this against him anymore but because i don't like i love my dad he's my best friend my dad is my best friend he's my go-to for anything in this world um and our relationship has only gotten better and it was always amazing

he was the guy he was the dad that took me to hitting lessons pitching lessons two or three times a week like to all my games never missed a game when it came to work like he would leave work to make sure he was at everything but in my head yeah because I wasn't the perfect son I would say you know what I mean because I wasn't in shape like all the rest of my friends and I I would be like oh he's I would make it with my head that he doesn't love me as much because i'm this and not that right right okay okay did you ever right of course as a parent yeah i totally get it um did you ever blame anyone did you ever did you ever play the um the victim or did you know did you have i i know i never blamed anyone for my for my Yeah, me neither. I knew.

Like I said, I didn't know what I was doing to my body, but I knew what I was eating and consuming. And I knew when I would sneak behind people's backs to eat or, like I said, showing up to work already eating a meal and then acting like this is my meal. I knew what I was doing. Was your dad the only one that kind of gave you – like, held up the mirror of truth a little bit? Or were there other people in your life that did that as well? There was definitely some. So I'll never forget this. And I'm still friends with this guy to this day.

We're not really close. But we still, if I see him, we're going to talk. Like, we were childhood friends remember i think i was like around 20 and for something we were hanging out i think we were smoking weed together and we went to this convenience store and um i remember i grabbed ice cream and like an apple fritter like danish type thing and like those big brown ones yes yeah yeah i always got those. Cause they were the biggest,

I didn't care what I liked the most. I'm like, that looks like it's the most food. That's what's good. Exactly. Other kids would get like the little glazed donut. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?

This apple is four times the size. What the fuck's wrong with you? 100%. Yeah. And I remember him sitting there and going, you know, you're killing yourself. Right.

And I was like, what? What are you talking about? And he yourself right and i was like what what are you talking about and he's like he's like dude you eat like shit and he's like and it's gonna catch up to you he's like we're not he's like you're growing up and i'm like and his name was wayne and i don't even know if he remembers saying that to me you know we could have been so high out of our minds like i don't know if you know like it stuck with me for years. Like, so I had friends that like, that's awesome. Yeah. And then this last time around, um, my, uh, so the owners of the gym that I'm at my cousin, Danielle and her husband, Dave, um, this is where I, my whole journey, but Danielle, um, was always someone that would reach

out to me in concern because she got into CrossFit. Like, uh, I think she's six or seven years into it now. And she would just be like, Hey Jake, you can always come out or check out our gym whenever you want. Um, you know, no pressure, just putting it out there. Love to see, uh, um, I'm having a deja vu i know i feel like i've interviewed other people when i was doing the crossfit podcast who said the same thing that there would be these obese people that i would have on the show or formerly obese and someone at a crossfit gym would say that to him i would see greg do that walk right up to a fucking dude who's 400 pounds drinking a fucking coke like a dude who's

so big like it's not he doesn't look he's wearing clothes it looks like he just put a sheet on and uh and he would say you know what i'm talking about their shirts it's like their shirt's so big and tucked in and then it just lays out like yeah it's nuts and he'd be like hey what are you doing they'd be like what and they'd be like you're gonna get type 2 diabetes and the dude be like i already got it and greg's like well go to one of my fucking gyms here's my phone phone number and he'd give him his personal phone number and i would just be like holy fuck is that crazy and he's like what are they gonna do he's like i really fucking care yeah as a as a past fat guy yeah um i wish more people did that i really do like i never took it some people do

i'm not i'm still only speaker for me but i never took offense when someone was like yo you need to get in shape because like i knew it and like as part of me was like thanks like you're right i'm not gonna do shit about it but you're right like so like like like you would take any i i i was like that as a kid too like if someone was was mean to me, I didn't care. Like I could convert, I was like an alchemist. I could take any energy and make it good energy. So you were like, you were like, you said earlier, I'm guessing you were so lonely that someone would be like, Hey, you're fat and you need to fucking like work out.

And you'd be like, Oh, that person cares about me. Like you would like spin that shit. Like, like, but it spin that shit like yeah i never got some energy exactly no so like but it's sad that like in like society we're so like scared to walk up to somebody and be like hey like there's this just an offer and like that's all you're doing is offering them something that could help them but we're scared because we're taught that like no you're beautiful no like it's inside the counts like that shit drives me up a wall it because even back then i would know like i'd like stop you are you gonna like ask my friends i'd be like you're not that fat you're just being like shut

the fuck up i am fat yeah they think they're helping don't lie to my face yeah yeah there's some people i think that like there are some people out there that feed off the um woe is me type shit but i think for the most part people that i don't know i'm speaking from my experience and maybe i'm wrong but like no one wants to be fat man no one wants to live like that and we all are looking people that are found looking for that, like they want to be that person that loses the way and is that inspiration, but it is hard. But the more, how long did it take you? It took you two years, right? To go from four, six, 400 to 200, 208, 212, 220. No, not actually.

Well, about a year. So if I lost that, I started in February of 2000. Was it? I'll be, July will be three years. So February 2019 is when I started. is when I started. And then I think I reached my goal weight of 215 by, I want to say the following March or April. So 13 or 14 months. Yeah, it wasn't. Wow. So you were basically losing 10 to 12 pounds a month every month. Yeah. On average. Yeah.

Had you tried before that? Like, had you tried to lose weight before, like, really try before that? No, not never anything like long and serious, just like short stints of like a month here, a month there. But it would be like any excuse to like fall off, like have to go to a wedding or something like that and be like mentally like one day you fucked up that you lost all your progress. I didn't. Yeah, I didn't have that thought process of like, OK, one day you can like last night I went to a wedding, had a great time today. Back on the back, like back on your horse, like get back to what you do every single day. It's no big deal. I've had night of having out having a couple drinks um were there any recognized triggers that like you know you maybe you're on the straight and narrow for a little bit and then was there anything like consciously that happened that that pulled you right back to that or was it just a

slow like you said one day off the bandwagon and then you're yeah one day of getting that sugar back in your system and like – yeah, just like I said, falling off, having some pizza the next morning. Fuck it. I messed up yesterday. Let's head to McDonald's. Back to McDonald's. The main reason why I ask this is right now we're doing a nutrition challenge at the gym and we have a bunch of people going through it. There's a handful of people that I've seen go through it year after year And they tend to have this yo-yo effect where they get this great result. They finish the eight week challenge. And then literally a month later, we could see the check-ins at the

gym just drop off. And then they're right back at the challenge the next year. And they're heavier than when they were their heaviest, when they had started. So I was just curious if there was anything that had, that helped you stay on the long-term path that I could kind of relay to them during this challenge so I think one of the bigger things for me was is long-term goals something that can't be achieved in eight weeks like that's great eight-week challenge is awesome but once those eight weeks is up what are you really going to like maybe use the eight-week challenge as a starter for something bigger so for me when i first started losing the weight i said what physically do you want to do that you thought you'd never be able

to do let's let's start there and uh my first thing for me was i want to run a half marathon like a 346 pounds started after the surgery i was 346 pounds like all right my I want to run a half marathon, like a 346 pounds started after the surgery. I was 346 pounds. Like, all right, my goal is to run a half marathon. And so, um, what I did after the surgery was I started with, we have at, um, CrossFit RET, we had this thing called RET fit and it's, it's not quite CrossFit is no barbell pretty much. It's CrossFit RET, we had this thing called RET Fit. And it's not quite CrossFit. It's no barbell, pretty much. It's CrossFit without the barbell. And it's for, like, beginners, people that want to get in,

maybe some older women, kind of like that setup. So I started with that, and I started running or walking three times a week. And I had to start. So the first, first time I went out there or first few weeks I went out there, I would do electric poles. So I would run to one pole, one telephone pole,

walk to the next one, run one telephone pole, run to the next one. Like I, did you come up with that? Yeah. It was just like something. Pretty good. Yeah. pretty good yeah good i approve that's good shit yeah and then it would be okay today on your run you're gonna do two phone poles and walk one yeah progressed it until i was whatever until i felt like i could run a mile and then I ran the mile. That was a big accomplishment for me.

You know what I mean? So, like, in going for a half marathon, there's a lot of other little accomplishments in there that you can feel proud of as you're going. And I think that was big for me. And all, meanwhile, still coming to CrawlFit and doing the RDT Fit. fit and so i it took me until about the same time to run as i lost the weight i ran the half marathon in may of 2020 and it wasn't because of covid i couldn't do an official one there was no official oh yeah i saw that on your site you just ran it it with your buddy. I think it's even better that you did that. It shows more like you were committed regardless. Yeah.

I'm doing it. I knew when I was ready and like I was ready to go. Your buddy hates you by the way, for making him do that with no matter what he says. That guy, Josh is a nut when it comes to, he runs with like a half marathon every Sunday. Oh damn. That was just another, that was just another day for him. guy he just did a couple marathons he's he's another good dude lost a lot of weight um so i got a question for you so so some girl who works at a crossfit gym is like hey you should come to crossfit and she's my cousin okay and you never

oh the brunette pretty girl yes yes yeah okay and um so she and so you never go and then you decide do you tell her you're gonna get this um surgery yeah and she actually like she's like are you out of your fucking mind dude yeah there i am running it yep um she and then definitely like not for it but she was also like a kind of guy where a lot of people got were like all right jake like if this is what's going to take for you to finally like do something um yeah that's where i'm at too with it i'm stoked you did it i'm you know what i mean that's where it kind of came down to people were like all right we've tried other avenues and so what we did the day the week before

i got my surgery she me and her met at a starbucks uh-huh and we sat down and she just started talking to me about okay like i'm gonna work with you that's the owner right there you saw in that video sorry um he's um we're gonna go with that guy wear shirts that are too small for him right he looked like he had a good body uh that dude is ripped yeah he's a stud we bust his balls so much like we have a small group of us now and and he takes the brunt of it all, but he is such a good dude. They call those scapegoats. They take all the misplaced questions. Dave takes it well. He's a good dude. Dave Lorenzo. Hey, you should make that t-shirt for him. Dave takes it well.

Okay, so she sits you down a week before, and she's like, look, when you're done with your surgery, you got to start coming into the gym. Yeah, pretty much. She's like, you got to come to the gym. Did your doctor tell you that? The doctor? So I had a really good doctor and he was like, do you have a plan? And I told him, I was like, I think I'm going to try this CrossFit thing.

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Pandora. Be love. What does be love mean to you? I definitely would say my be love role model is for sure my sister. Unconditional, infinite love. Something that is never never ending that you know is always there never questioned never questioned no matter if you fall off a cliff she's there to catch you you know be love shop now at pandora.net say go for it uh dr anup chanko yeah he was he was he's so supportive of me he's like i'm one of his favorite clients he always says um but yeah you're awesome you're fucking a poster child do you think how important was do you i wonder if they made every single person who had this surgery go to a crossfit gym if their success rates would skyrocket i i looked up some stats last night after i saw that you had

had the surgery and it is a fucking steady decline it's like i i i i have a link somewhere it goes from like 95 in the first year successful by the time you get to the fifth year it's 70 and then if you look at some 10 year shit it gets really bad it's like yeah you're down to 10 of excess body weight loss like that and that's what people a lot of people don't understand about that surgery and that that's where it is um but you have this gym you have all this peer pressure around you that you've self-imposed right like 100 yeah yeah it's people who you you aspire to look like people who will judge you if you came in there with a gatorade people who like if you go out with and no one will eat the bread in front of you like it's a good group not gonna lie like

being on this podcast was like another thing like yo like now you're really gonna get in front of you like it's a good group not gonna lie like being on this podcast was like another thing like yo like now you're really gonna get in front of some people you might like like this is another reason like you're gonna have to keep your ass in shape but like i honestly yeah i want to say i'm past that point of needing that like i i don't know what i would like do with my life if i don't like leave work and come at come to rdt every day You know what I mean? Like I kind of be lost without it, but I do still use things like this for motivation. Like you'll find this funny. Like I'm working out last week and like, you know, when you want to start slowing down, I'm like, dude,

you're about to be on the Sevan pod. Like thinking mentally, you're going to be on Sevan. If you don't want to have any bitches on this podcast, keep fucking going. Like that's mentally, you're going to be honest, 7-pack doesn't want to have any bitches on it. I guess I keep fucking going. Mentally, you do that stuff. Every game. You said something on your Instagram about your wife now? She's not my wife. She's my girlfriend.

Your girlfriend that is really important for everyone to hear. You will not get to be with great people like Jake, unless you have this mindset, you will not live a happy life unless you have this mindset that your girlfriend has. You said that she doesn't care if you're at the gym for five hours, but even more so that she doesn't care. She's happy for you. She's happy that you're happy. She's not like, Hey, you should spend more time with me. And that is when you find someone like that. Like my wife never says oh

you're doing another podcast like that would fucking break me if she said that yeah never she always it's always like go get them you did such a great job i listened to your show i love you i'm so impressed at your dedication like the tiniest little things and those just launch me yeah no i kylie has never once not i'm no bullshit never once when i wake up at 5 a.m to head over to the gym or every saturday and sunday like i go to the 7 a.m i try to get there by 7 a.m do the 7 a.m class with everybody hang around um and she usually gets there around 9 30 but never once when i'm waking her up is she like what are you doing like get back in bed like you go never once has she been like you go too much she's always like babe have fun i'll see you

there be careful text me when you get there yeah when you have people who are inspired in your life like jake don't fucking do anything except nurture it i don't care what it is they're into fucking bonsai trees she yeah just nurture people's passion and i'm in my army or whatever that thing is you full paper like even if it's your kid don't ever tell your kid that they're doing something stupid if it's not harmful just let them go down the path nurture that she she's amazing like she's still like last saturday night she stayed up late making my meal preps for the week like she's one of those that wants to like help me eat healthy, like make sure that I have meals to eat at work.

So I don't have to go order out or anything like that. She is my biggest supporter. She's the love of my life. A hundred percent. No doubt about it in my mind. And, but like, that was part of like one of the big things as far as me dating someone, because in 27 years before i lost the weight i'm not

kidding when i said i didn't have a girlfriend like i never like you know like middle school stupid shit but i never from 20 when it actually actually serious i never had a girlfriend or anything so like when i finally did decide like i'm gonna date someone because i'm in shape now and all that stuff and like i wanted to make sure like it was someone like kylie and uh where did you meet her at the gym at at artistry oh shit yeah yeah so she hold on before before you before you go into that i want to ask you what is this so that is what what is that bill murray that is oak group he um now he he passed away um a few years ago so we have a little have you tried that have you tried letting the mouse not on my tongue we would do our fingers and this guy was like you guys are pussies. He's like, watch this shit. And he's just a legend, man.

He's snapping a mousetrap on his tongue. On his tongue. And he would do it 15 more times, Devon. The coolest dude you ever met, the nicest guy, genuine, would do anything for you. Like I said, he did pass away a couple years ago. How did he pass? Is he a drinker?

Massive heart attack, definitely. Beer, smoking, unhealthy. Yeah'd he how'd he pass is he a drinker massive heart attack definitely uh beer smoking unhealthy yeah he looks like he looked like he drank wow i'm sorry to hear that but that's pretty incredible that the mousetrap on the tongue is that amazing i'm glad uncle ru got a shout out on the podcast today that's your dad's brother no he's not actually my official uncle we just we have like a hunting club and like he's my the guy who hopefully will be my best man one day if i do get married uh it's it's his actual uncle okay and so i just was so close with the family like that guy he's like my brother robbie he's like my brother so we just called him uncle rube that's what that's

what everyone called him okay all right so sorry so you met your girl at the gym yeah so i uh i kind of definitely like went after her a little bit um like a lot of it a lot of it she had she has an amazing body she's a beautiful girl um and so she put up this post on like, we have like a community Facebook page and she put up, Hey guys, she was new to it. I'm looking for my first pair of CrossFit shoes. Let me know what your recommendations are. So me, me, me, I just slid, slid in her DMS a little bit. I'm a Nike Metcon guy. But that's just me. And then she ended up going with the Metcons.

So I'm like, all right, maybe she like has some, maybe that's a good sign. Maybe she like. See how easy men are. See how dumb we are. She bought the shoes I said she must want to get married. Exactly. I'm like, yeah.

Right to the store and bought a ring. Yeah. She needs to be, she's both of my wife now. She bought Metcons. Yeah. Yeah, she needs to be, she's moving my wife now. She bought Metcons. Yeah, so that's kind of how I got in her DMs like that. And then she got them and I didn't hear back from her. So I messaged

her again. It's like, hey, how you liking the shoes? And she wasn't a fan. She likes to end up going getting nanos. Does she have wide feet does she have wide feet no but she just she's a nano girl is what it is i'm a meccan guy you know yeah whatever but uh as we said from there kind of like snowballed into like we didn't dive right in as far as dating we probably more talked on like instagram dms for like three or four months and then i finally got her number

and i never would you go to the gym when you knew she was there did you start like changing your schedule and shit like you'd be like all right this chick goes to the eight o'clock class no it was tough because she she always goes to night she's actually in the gym working out right now um but she goes to all like the 9 30 a.m. because she's a was actually about to change, but she's a x-ray technician. She would work like two to 11 every day. So she would go in the morning and I would work like a nine to five. And so I would come after. But on the weekends, I always knew she'd be in on like Saturday mornings or Sunday mornings.

So like I wasn't sure which class she would be at. So I'd always make sure to be there at 7 a.m and try to catch her with the workout or something like that if she wasn't in the first class and you saw her come to the second class would you stay i don't i till this day i'll get here at 7 a.m and i won't leave till one wow yeah i'm obsessed man and what do you do there like you're just talking to people like volunteering checking people in criticizing people hey you didn't put your bar away dumb fuck like just you're just just yeah you know like i'm i'm the ball buster in the gym a lot of times and like but for the most part well no like oh yeah i most of my friends now come to rdt or if i had like like my best friend robbie that i was talking about who was gonna be my best man like he didn't come to rdt but now he does like i got him in the crossfit um my mom comes across comes

to rdt now oh you must be so proud of your mom yeah uh you know i've been trying like for years just to get her in here intimidated intimidated finally comes in um does like we have a foundations thing where you do 101 for your first uh like six classes with one of our coaches is one on one. Get the foundations of everything. Then they put you in classes and she just she fell in love. I was like, mom, it's one on one. Like and for now, she like used to like the first couple of times, like what classes have the least amount of people. Now she's showing up to 930 class class which has like 20 people in it every every day and she's a part of the community loves it um but for the most part all my friends now are already team members um and not and they weren't before like they weren't my friends before but

like i was talking about we have like a group of four guys now well there's a bigger group of that but like there's a four that i play golf with pretty regularly when it's not 15 inches of snow on the ground um and it's yeah i mean my my buddy richie dave and sean and those guys have become like if you would have took me back three years ago who would be in my wedding compared to now like it's a completely different wedding setup you know what i mean like these three guys would be my wedding compared to like the people that i said that i thought were my friends and like um and like you talk about you talk about like you hang around the people who you want to be like you know what i mean yes yes we're all mirrors here we're all mirrors and these guys they show up on Saturday mornings with me.

And, I mean, we spend the first hour rolling out, talking bullshit about whatever. Then we hit a lift and a workout. And it's just part of my routine now. Saturday mornings, like, if you want to find me, you'll find me at RET. Sunday morning, same thing. Did you come here to Colorado because you saw Matt Bickle went went there who the hell's matt bickle all right let's check uh matt bickle is the guy i had on the show he lost 100 pounds he i mean he was like a he was like a 500 pound dude who dropped to like 386 he's

like he's huge he might be like six six six, six, seven. He's a giant dude. Anyway, he, he, when I had him on the show, he came here. And since then, I've always thought of this place is kind of, and I,

I want to say, I want to say that maybe, who did I know who has no, maybe someone I knew who had no legs or no arms and no legs, but basically this place, I always think of this place as sort of like the um proving ground for people who lost weight did you were you running the stairs here i'm showing a picture of uh um the red rock uh uh amphitheater it's outdoor amphitheater with crazy staircase did you go there to exercise are you there to see i mean i went

there i actually this was actually a day after skiing in Colorado. I was skiing that day, and we hit this on the way home. But, like, it's funny you bring this up. Like, the only reason I was able to go out to Colorado was because I had finally lost the weight and wasn't self-conscious about getting on a plane for five hours sitting next to someone. You know what I mean? Like, I would feel terrible. The longest flight I would make as a fat guy,

I was a two hour down to Orlando so I could go to Disney or something like that. Yeah. Anything over that, I was like, hell no. And then part of me was like, my buddy had moved out there and he had been out there for probably like three years before I actually went out there.

And he was like a really close friend of mine and always telling me to come out. I just give him every excuse under the sun. In reality, it was I did not want to go out there on a plane for five hours and be petrified if I'm next to somebody and like torturing them because. Yeah, they hate you. They hate you. Yeah, I was definitely one of those fat guys. I was like in your seat. I knew like I knew what was going on. They hate you. Yeah, I was definitely one of those fat guys that was like – In your seat. That knew.

I knew what was going on. I didn't want to be that asshole that was oblivious to like – I wouldn't walk out of the house with a wife beater on because I knew no one wanted to see that. You know what I mean? I do. I do. I was the exception.

I'm fascinated. By people that do that? I'm just fascinated by just all bodies. I just like – As a kid, I just remember just like loving like the fat fat like i thought the fastest guy in the world was so fucking cool or the fattest twins or i just did not i'm just not by the way i was on a flight one time coming back from las vegas and i i sit in the seat it's there's three seats and i sit in the seat and there's a lady next to me who's probably 100 pounds overweight and a man next to me is 100

pounds overweight and both of their shoulders are encroaching on my shoulders. Right. And I tell myself, I'm like, I can either just fuck it, like, like, just be so cool with it. Like, we're just that's what I'm doing this trip. I'm just touching these two people. Then about so I fell asleep and they're touching me. They're kind of keep me warm. And I'm kind of like talking myself into enjoying it and like just – yeah, this is fine.

We're just people just on a plane. Love this. Yeah. About 20 minutes before we land, they're talking, and I realized that they're engaged. And I said to them, I said, oh, do you guys want to sit next to each other? And they said, no, it's too tight. Then I was fucking pissed i'm like you motherfuckers like i gotta get this fucking seat yeah at first i was like cool hey

we're having a love-in you fuckers bought the outside seats to squish a fucking midget like me i was now that's messed up at that point they're probably the first class seat you would yeah well like we're talking like spirit airlines an extra 50 dollars for this it's called the big seat like it's not first class like don't get me wrong gotcha okay but it's called the big seat and i could actually fit in it you know without um without encroaching on somebody else but yeah it got to the point where like flying was so embarrassing for me because i needed like the seat belt extender they'd have to come with like an extra belt so that you could get around my um i would always take those when i would when those would like if i would go to a seat and there'd be one of those i would always

take one of those i used to fly a lot like so like at least once a week and i love seat belt extenders i don't know why i just thought they were so cool i mean i didn't want one so how many i don't know i don't even know if i have. I probably threw them away or gave them to my – Wasn't there a period of time where they tried to make people purchase two seats? Like if you were a certain weight limit or something? If they did, I never got to that point. That was an awesome day right there, man. You say here that basically you got to skydive –

when you wanted to skydive before, you were too heavy. What's too heavy to skydive? I never even thought of thought of that 250 you can't be more than 250 for skydiving wow for tandem i think like and then 275 if you go by yourself i guess it makes sense it's a shit ton of impact when you land yeah and yeah i i guess more safety for the instructor too i mean you don't know they can't like reach around you or something. What happens? What happens to your penis when you lose 200 pounds? I knew you were going to ask him like yesterday we're at this wedding.

I'm like, I know he's going to ask the questions because he's that guy. And I knew it was coming about. So it doesn't actually get bigger, but because you lose the fat, you get to finally see more of it. Yeah, it looks like it gets bigger, right? It definitely grew.

Yeah. So I'm very happy with that now. No, it's just to be able to see my dicks. It was like a big like. Yeah. You know what I mean? Without like having a mirror on my toes. That was a big accomplishment

and um little stuff like that like yeah people joke about it but like it doesn't bother me like it's great if anything it's a it's a good thing now you know what i mean and uh i if if i've i'm gonna say at one point like i was taking a shitload of create this is probably 15 years ago i remember just taking a shitload of creatine i really wanted to bench 225 it still never did it um and i got up to 182 i would say that again that's like the gym owner dave lorenzo we have we have an inside joke with him that he can't bench 225 so occasionally we'll send us a video of him hitting it um uh by the way that's a crazy uh split jerk you do at um 300 pounds thank you yeah that's that's crazy um uh and your bar muscle-ups crazy too um that was a stroke yeah

who would have ever thought and okay enough penis talk um who would have ever thought that you would you would get a bar muscle-up not Not me. Yeah, this is nuts. It was a pipe dream, man. This is something that an obese person will never do, get a bar muscle-up. You guys can't hear the audio, but there are so many people that watch me that day that go absolutely insane because they've been, like, watching me try to get this. And this was, I think, what, last March? Yeah, last March. insane because they've been like watching me try to get this and this was i think what last march yeah last march and uh i actually end up um oh there's a lot yeah you hear that yeah that's actually the owner dave um screaming there and then the other guy sean who like i said is part of that golfing group um when did you when did you when did you fancy do you so so you're 350 pounds you start going to this crossfit gym you had the surgery when

how long are you there before you're like man maybe one day i'll have a bar muscle up so because that's crazy to think that you can do that all right so like as far as a cross it goes i started doing it like in my mind just to like get in shape you know what i mean like i didn't i didn't know like the methodology behind it all it was just it was just like somewhere to exercise and sweat yeah and so what happened was i was on this goal for my half marathon and like still going like i said showing up to the gym doing the workouts i probably came to the gym two or three times a week, and I would run the other three times a week. So not coming here every single day, but just coming here.

And then the gym shut down because March 2020 of COVID, and that lasted all of two months. And in that meantime – Were you tripping when they closed yes and no um yes because like i was starting to like get these friends there and like i was feeling accepted somewhere and like i really liked that but i wasn't at this point i'm so motivated for my like half marathon like this is march of 2020 so i'm only like three months out like i'm really getting in shape now i'm over you're not getting depressed and thinking you're gonna relapse and going to fucking wawa's or whatever like dave and danielle did an awesome job of communicating

with everyone giving us an at-home workout every single day doing zoom workouts and stuff like that and uh so i would do that but at the same time i'm like all right i'm just gonna amp up running and in the meantime my dad this is where the spandex comes in my dad's like hey weather's getting nice how about we start like mountain biking and getting on the bike and stuff like that he goes i'll buy your first mountain bike for you wow that gets you started i'm like i'm like all right awesome like deal deal you got a deal so me and him started doing that and i'll buy you're buying me a dildo to get me started i'll take anything for free yeah get it give me exactly buy me something and like i think i even there might be a post on my instagram where it's like i just

did my first bike ride with my dad and yeah it's there somewhere i saw yeah and i'm like this i can't tell you i'm trying not to get choked up about it, but how the happiness I felt after that bike ride, seeing the joy on my dad's face that he finally just got to have a bike ride with his son after 28 years of something that was his passion. And I got to share that with him. And it's that day, it still fucks me up how How, like how good that, like, I'm getting chills right now because I find like, and I know I'm going to say this again. I know he was always proud of me in a way, but this time I felt like, wow, my dad's really fucking proud of me. Like, yeah, I just kept up with him because I'm in shit, you know, I've been running and like,

wow, like what a feeling, man. So like that, that like and this was all going on while the gym shut down so that hit me with another spark of like i want to ride bikes so like i went out and bought myself a road bike started doing that with him and uh in the meantime rdt started you know how happy that made your mom too oh sure man like like to see her two favorite dudes doing shit together i mean it's just fucking awesome yeah and that guy in the middle that's sean he's one of the dudes that i was talking about uh that's part of that like little golf group i have now he that guy right there um i can't say enough about one being like like so when you talk about like a CrossFit guy who like, just like talks about from nutrition, from mentality to work ethic to being just like

overall great human being like he is, could walk into any CrossFit gym in America, and they'd be happy to have him because he's that good of a coach, that good of a human being. Just adds to every scene he's in. Yes. And like we, we, it's funny. Like I say, like Dave, Lorenzo is like our scapegoat of the group because me and Richie are the ball busters. And we always say like, we can't bust Sean's balls because he's too good of a human being. Like we feel like he's that good. And like,

even if you do try to say something to him he'll just be like he'll play it off like yeah yeah like he'll make it in a positive way he's just like one of those guys like introduced me to stoicism thoughts and stuff like that um but yeah so like when the quarantine was going on i got onto the bike and stuff and i really got into biking started hitting the road bike well when we finally came back to rdt i think like one of the first workouts was an assault bike and box step over workout and so i've been spending all this time on the bike and i'm like i think i'll just i'll try the rx today whatever it was, the 50-pound stepovers and the soft bike.

I think I was fourth or fifth on the whiteboard. I've always been a competitive guy. Like I said, I always did sports. It sparked something in me where I'm like, I guess maybe I could kind of get competitive. Not competitive as far as a competitor, but with my gym. You know what I mean? These guys I used to watch over on the turf while i'm doing rdt fit i'm starting to like see my numbers get near them yeah like that's when i like i lit this fire in me

as far as crossfit goes that's a cool picture that's a great picture what a crazy juxtaposition that was a uh that was like yeah that's when I started realizing I was getting in shape. But yeah, so I started like, realized like, loving the competition with it and like, making friends in the gym. So then by the end of that summer, I was like, full fledged. Like, all right, I want to do CrossFit now. That's the, that's summer of 2019. 20, after the half marathon. i had the surgery and i started that summer just like i was at okay that july july of 2019 i had the surgery february is when i started the process so july 2019 i had the surgery um and then yeah that year is when I started. So July from then on July to May is when

I did the, uh, half marathon. And that's, it was after the half marathon that somewhere in there, you're like, Hey, I could do a bar muscle up. I can start doing some of this. Yeah. I'm like, all right. Like I want to, I want to do all those things that those guys are doing. Like, this is now your goals. Like this is your long-term goal. Cause I know bar muscle up, like, again, like I talked about earlier, having long-term, having long-term goals. And,

uh, that was obviously a huge long-term goal. And now I have like the goal of a ring muscle up. So hopefully you'll be seeing that coming up soon. I've been hopping on the rings here and there and giving them a roll, but so the way it's out, you shit loads of negatives negatives all right i mean that's how i did it i just did 10 negatives like every other day

okay like start with a really fast one so that like you know go down really quickly because you don't want to like and then by the 10th one just war and and fucking war with that false grip and then as it rips you out and then one day you'll just go the other way don't even worry about getting muscle up just do negatives negatives are the way all gymnasts get strong i think you know i'm one of those typical guys that wants to like skip right to like just get up there fuck kipping i i can't even i don't even know if i can do a kipping muscle up yeah your strict muscles are ridiculous who what what happened here uh so that is liam and he passed away of sids at eight months old and and is this boy related to you um no so you know i talked earlier about like i have friends

in my life that aren't in my life anymore that is part of that group um yeah and they were like the family i considered like they at one point like my second family and yeah they're great people i had nothing bad to say about i just sometimes you gotta go separate ways in life and uh but they he was he was one of the uh brothers that i'm friends with he was their son and they asked me to be the godfather oh man and so i was his godfather yeah and he he passed away says and i was very close to him i saw i probably saw him like every i don't know that i'm in his eight months of being alive i had maybe five days went by that i didn't see him type of thing so i saw him every single day pretty much so it rocked you i thought yeah bad bad bad um when was that how many years ago is that i think we were coming up on five years now um did it did it fuck them up the the

your friend and his wife yeah yeah um Yeah. Um, and then they're not together. Nah, they were, uh, they're not together anymore. Actually. They weren't together when it's a lot of drama that, like I said, there's a lot of drama that goes on with, they're not, they weren't even together when that happened. And that's kind of why I was always in his life so much. I was kind of, um, helping out. Um, so, I mean i mean that's as far i don't want to get too much into that just because it's like some just other bullshit but yeah he was uh he had a big impact on my life and still to this day has a big impact he's the um screensaver on my phone you know what i mean he's just damn he mentalized me but like part of this journey was like i'm always like i hope he's proud you know what i mean like i um he definitely had a

a lot to do with me wanting to be a father one day and in order to be a father one day i can't be 400 pounds and yeah you cannot be no i cannot be uh is that is that why you posted this also because of the loss of that friend of yours yeah man uh my life is just so uh easy i don't have any of that shit you know what i mean like everyone who died in my in my life all the hardship my life was supposed to happen you know what i mean you're supposed to get a flat tire when you run over a piece of wood your grandfather's supposed to die yeah i haven't had any uh yeah some of this guy matt bickle you should look this guy up you guys i will yeah i wasn't saying that like disrespectful when i said no no no no no i didn't it wasn't taken as that no oh wait what what um is there anything you could do to help someone else who who is 100 pounds or 200 pounds overweight

um to get on it or is it just an individual journey is like fuck i ain't got nothing for you good luck or is it like i do have something for you no what i have for the sun person is is give it more than that two weeks that we all give it and then give up and it's like addiction with anything it's like you're gonna stop when the person's right when you've had enough and some people will never or like when they finally get to that point it's too late because they just had a massive heart attack. You know what I mean? What I have for people is what you see. My mom, biggest advocate, has always said actions speak louder than words. And that's what I kind of want to put out there.

But what I can say is, and this is from old fat Jake talking to some people out there that are fat. And if you're hearing this, like, you can do it. I did it. If it takes the surgery to do it, don't let anyone make you feel bad about that. And if you don't want to do the surgery, find a CrossFit gym, find a nutritionist, be accountable for yourself. Find a CrossFit gym. Find a nutritionist. Be accountable for yourself.

But at the same time, for me, it was finding out that I had diabetes that kicked my ass. I saw family members had to get half their leg chopped off because everyone, I guess, has that breaking point. So you got scared. Fucking A. So what happened was – scared you got scared fucking hey so like what happened was yeah like like i'm smoking like i'm smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and then i feel a lump on my throat and all of a sudden now i quit for a month exactly like oh fuck what kind of happened was i was like three years ago again down in disney and i would just went with my parents and i remember like my feet just being excruciating like in pain being so being so uncomfortable, barely fitting in rides.

But then I was also started getting these like I felt like crashes, like like my body would be like like feeling terrible while I'm down in Disney. And something definitely didn't feel right. And I never like was really experienced this before. So I have a really good buddy who's a physician's assistant for like an urgent care around here. I went to him and he's like, do you ever take like your your blood sugar? I'm like, no. What the hell is that? I don't even know what it was. He was like, let me take it. And I think it was like a 308 or something like that. And we're supposed to be around 100 or under 100. He's like, oh, you got type 2 diabetes like what and you know

at first I'm like well what do we do for his medication blah blah blah I'm like and mentally I'm like no fuck this I don't want to be on medication the rest of my life like I don't want to I don't want to live like that. It was, it was my breaking point. Diabetes was like, for some reason in my head, that was what it took, I guess. And I guess not seeing 400 pounds on the scale wasn't that. Cause I always said to my head, like before that, like, all right, once you get to 300, that's it. Never going higher.

Once you get to 400, that's it. Never going higher. It wasn't any of that that made me do it. It was fucking diabetes. Cause that, that scared the absolute shit out of me. And, uh, do you think that's the only way?

Like, I always think like a rock bottom or like, yeah, like either you have to be like to have massive change. You either have to be like, get suicidal, um, have some sort of,

uh, you know, um, supernatural intervention. You know what i mean like like people are like holy shit like i got in a car accident when i was drunk and i floated to the heavens and i heard god say time to quit drinking or or you have to be so afraid of death that you make the change like i i personally think that it has to go that way you either have to be so terrified you have to have near death but like i feel like no one changes like it like okay i'm 30 pounds overweight i'm gonna change it's like oh fuck you've started

on this journey of drinking every day and you're gonna have to go to jail before you quit i mean i know that's harsh but i just feel that way no i i maybe jail five times and room with bubba for the week. You see like with addicts, I'm like, we all have that experience of people like go to jail 19 times and still they come out and the first thing they want to do is go get high. You know what I mean? It's gotta be bad. People have tried diets and like tried 20 freaking diets.

And the first thing, like, as soon as it goes bad, the first thing they want to do is go grab that donut or cheesesteak or piece of pizza. You know what I mean? You should pat yourself on the back for trying on the other hand um i did before i was able to quit smoking i had to try like i mean there were times where i quit smoking for a year and then relapsed yeah but i had to quit i had to try probably i don't know 40 50 times in my life of quitting before i actually was and and i and I would be compassionate with myself I'd be like okay you just got to try again yeah and I want to honestly within the last five years of being fat I didn't I didn't try shit honestly like I would kind of surrender to like okay I'm gonna die at 40 yeah like I would like I said I was trying to speed up the process and then for some reason

it was like I guess I guess as fucked up as it is, I was more open. Like I want the quick, easy death, like a massive heart attack and get the hell out. And then when they told me diabetes, I'm like, no, that's like slow. People was going to have to wipe your ass. I was like, I don't want that. You know what I mean?

And like, I'm too much of a pussy to actually like kill myself. Like I, I was suicidal suicidal but like in the in the sense of like i want to do it from not like putting a gun to my head but yeah putting a cheesesteak to my mouth yeah yeah i get that i i think i i was kind of like that i had some moments like that too like there's no fucking way i can hurt myself nah i i yeah but this shit needs to be over but i can't hurt myself yeah i'm. Like, I didn't want to do it. I don't know. You know,

it's just, you think of ways, but it's just like, nah, I want to like, I'll be the first dude who dies from just eating M&Ms. Yeah. We found it was 600 pounds of M&Ms.

I hope they took on one of these or something. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, as far as like, does everyone have to have that moment like i hope not i hope there's some people out there just say like like at what point like if you're to that point like i hope someone out there is like maybe in the process of like they're eating like shit and

like still eating that stuff and they're like wow before i get there like before i get to how jake was maybe that i can have that impact but like if you're already there you're already there so that is the you know that kind of is your down that is your rock bottom i mean if you're 300 plus pounds i mean what no offense to anybody unless you're like seven foot like no one should be 300 plus pounds i don't care who you are. I don't care how big you are. It's not healthy for you. How tall are you? I'm 6'1". Oh, so you're a big dude.

Yeah, I'm definitely a bigger dude. And like I said, now I'm- You got big old hands too, huh? Can I see your hands? Do you still have big old hands? Yeah, I got big hands. Yeah. Your hands got skinnier though too a little bit.

Oh, hell yeah everything there's some pictures with you like holding women and you make them look like in your instagram you make them look like like a little soccer ball yeah oh yeah there's a one i hold like my little friend tara i still i'm still close with her i work with her actually but she's like five foot nothing and 115 pounds soaking wet. And next to me, she looked like, we looked like the number 10. She was the one and I was the zero. Yeah.

Wow. She, but yeah, like I was a, I was a massive dude. You know, I was like that protector guy. I was the, the friend zone guy. Yeah. That sucks. Right now i'm like 235 voted and even then like i like i guess like i don't like seeing that like i almost don't like seeing that number that high but i i've i've been there now like within the 235 to 245 range for probably about a year now i would say i've

i've stayed there and so i'm starting to feel like really comfortable at that weight and realizing that's like my walking around weight and in the summer i'll probably start running more again i'll drop to like 225 ish and hang around there for the summer but like in the winter i like to focus on lifting as you can see and trying to get the weights up and you know the typical summer body bullshit that i get to i get to experience now i'm like oh i'm going for a summer body like that's cool you know that's stuff i never yeah there's so much that i've experienced just from like like look where i'm at like i the fact that i'm on the seven podcast right now telling my story is is a dream for me like it's something like I I started like listening to you guys every single day and like I reached out to you one time like

yeah that's about a year ago when we first ran into each other right on Instagram because I uh only reason I reached out is because a year ago in March I went to my L1 and on the way there I was in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, which is about an hour and a half away from us. And it was with the great James Hobart. And on the way up there, I'm listening to you, Matt and Josh. Wow, Josh. I forgot. I'm sorry, buddy. You said something about Hobart. I'm like, oh, shit. He knows Hobart. I'm going to message him and say,

and I guess you just clicked on my profile and you said, I forget how it went. I let you know I was doing my L1 and my journey. From then on, I started sending you updates of how I'm doing when I got my first baller muscle up and yeah i appreciate all that and i love following that like like i said at one

point like you made me feel like you were so proud of me i feel like i was telling your friends so like it was cool and like here i am now meeting you and talking to you and then like it's surreal it's surreal for me i'm i'm telling my story. It's all because I finally stopped being a lazy piece of shit and wanted more for myself. And unfortunately, this is going to sound harsh, but being fat comes down to being lazy. And there is not like I understand there's some conditions out there, thyroids and stuff and stuff like that's uncontrollable. But for the most part, for fat, you're lazy. I understand there's some conditions out there, thyroids and stuff like that. That's uncontrollable. But for the most part, for fat, you're lazy. It's lazy.

You eat bad. You don't want to take the time to make a meal. You know what I mean? Stuff like that. It's making the right choices. And I don't say that to be a prick. I just say that because so many people- No, everyone knows it. Because even skinny

people know when they're lazy like everyone knows when they're lazy it's 10 o'clock at night you haven't worked out you got an assault bike in the garage or you don't you don't have anything to do in the morning and it's 10 o'clock at night and you know that you need to go out and walk five miles and like like but instead you go you eat ice cream and you watch tv and you go to bed no it's not fucking acceptable you're a fucking being. You're not a fucking TV watcher. Don't put the fucking ice cream down. I don't care if it's 10 o'clock at night. Put on your fucking headlamp and go for a fucking walk for an hour.

Put in an audio book. You will hunt. Everyone knows you'll feel better. You'll come home from your hour walk. You'll get in the shower and you'll go to bed and you'll be so proud of yourself. You'll feel better. You'll be better. Yeah, you're fucking you

made the wrong fucking choice exactly it's made the fucking wrong choices being um accountable for yourself yeah i mean there's times when i just want to sit there and wake up and and not do shit but then i'm like that's what that's the choice that fat jake would make you know what i mean that's the choice that got you where you were and could you afford to take a day off fuck yeah like now you know what i mean like i don't have to work out seven days a week which like i i try not to but i'm like i don't recommend that but like i i find myself at rdt seven days a week whether i'm whether i'm working out or not because it i'm safe here you know what i mean i'm around around a bunch of people that aren't going to push me to do things i don't want to do they're not going to say why aren't you having that drink

you know what i mean like i think that's a big reason why kylie doesn't give a shit that i come here like she could have a boyfriend that gets off work and goes to the bar for three hours and what kind of shenanigans you get you know doing that yeah you bring up you bring up a really good point if you're at the bar and you've had three beers and you're done you'll always still have a fourth and a fifth if you hang out at the gym and you're done working out and you've been there an extra hour next thing you'll know you'll be over there and be like i wonder how long i can hang for and and instead of having three extra beers you'll do uh six hangs for 45 seconds each and you'll be like you would have never done that if you weren't in that environment it wasn't necessary but you just did it because you were bored and the same reason why you would drink a beer if you're bored

or if you were at home you'd eat in a bag of donuts if you were bored yeah i was at home sitting on the couch like what would i have been picking on? What have I been doing? It'd be simple. It's like me sitting next to Dave on the assault bike while I'm literally spinning it doing 10 RPMs, but I'm moving my body. Like, you know what I mean? Like, yes. Yeah. Sometimes people just overthink it too. And one of the things that we have at the gym that we try to tell people is we say, Hey, no judgment, just get yourself here and do the warmup. And if, and if you decide, Hey, today's not the day I'm not feeling it. And you do the warmup and you just leave, no one's going to stop you. We'll even clean up your equipment, everything else. And then what ends up happening is just like you guys were saying, you do the warmup, you start moving, you feel better. And

you're like, scoot, I'm already here. I'll do the workout. And then maybe you go to barbelljobs.com and get a job at that gym. Luckily already team is hiring. So I went to barbell jobs. No, you're a good dude you're a good dude i also want to say one more thing i i um this is the third show in a row that i'm drinking this um am i gonna say it right page page street page street coffee that your new guy i don't know if it's my new guy but it's like they sent me a bunch of coffee and i'm drinking it and i've done i like it like good if it's my new guy, but it's like they sent me a bunch of coffee, and I'm drinking it, and I like it. Is it good?

Yeah, it's fucking great. And I feel really bad saying this. The beans look exactly like the good dude's beans. They're like those little tiny brown ones. You're going to hear from Josh now. And this dude who I get the coffee from, he roasts it himself. He orders the beans and then takes them over to like a co-op roastery in New York City. The guy actually lives in Jersey.

You live in Jersey, right? Yeah. South Jersey. Page Street. I think it's Page Street. Paper Street? Page Street. Paper Street, but all out.

When you guys start talking your coffee, I'm always impressed because I'm just still like a go. Yeah, this is the guy. This is the guy who sent it to me he's he corrected me paper streak damn when am i gonna get it right um this dude's a really cool dude i'm like hey i if if good dudes is better like i won't be able to like talk up your coffee he's like i don't even care i just want to support the podcast i was like what that's all yeah and it actually is that's because you're doing good savannah man you're spreading good messages and i i definitely appreciate that it's definitely uh what about um how harsh what about my mom so i have some

friends who are obese see my mom will say to me i can't believe they're still friends with you i go why she's like you're so harsh be harsh like but i'm like i really so here's one of the issues where i struggle a little bit i don't care i really don't care that um someone is obese like i don't care like in the sense like i don't find it unattractive it doesn't bother me i know that if i'm sitting next to someone who's on a plane that's obese i don't mind yes yes i'm like i like i'll squig i'll hug the shit out of an obese person like i don't give a fuck like isn't it crazy that you get bitched at because you care about them though people well no this is what started happening that was weird so around this this the pandemic people started saying that old when i start seeing like i know that if there

weren't obese people here there would be no pandemic and and and i and I know that if there weren't obese people here, there would be no pandemic. And I know that 100%. I'm 100% positive that we wouldn't – if there were no obese people, there would be no pandemic. And how do I know that? Because I see that 96% of the people who died have had four or more comorbidities, and I know that those comorbidities are caused by eating added sugar and refined carbohydrates. Yeah, I picked the hell to try to get in in shape by the way. I know you're stoked. How much, how stressful would it be if you're fucking 200 over now? You're stressed.

I told everyone, I was like, I can't imagine if I was still 400 pounds, I'd be, I'd be the poster child of dying at a young age. They've been proposing me because a healthy 30 year old dies of no, I wasn't healthy. I was fat as shit.

So I'm so tired of them saying that it's old people or that we have to worry about like i just want to be like i mean you've seen them you've seen like the health ministers of of ireland and those health ministers who are like 400 pounds and they're like mandatory vaccines and i'm like dude i mean i don't know if you saw recently the the white house someone a fucking reporter asked that redheaded lady who speaks for joe biden pataki or pajacki they asked her um hey other countries are now pushing um healthy eating and uh exercise are we gonna do that and she's like no we know that the primary way of fighting this thing is through masks and vaccines that that's a lot that's a fucking lie and so at that point i i

i don't i'm not doing it to pick on people i'm doing it because it's the truth if you are obese then you're going to manifest you're you're you're the reason why we're in this situation well you're not the reason we're in this situation but but someone who's obese needs just like just like um there were finally black people who had enough of the blm thing and they're like listen motherfuckers like i don't like i'm i and i recognize as a black person that there might be racism but fighting racism with racism is not going to cure this thing um i just feel like that there needs to be someone from the obese community who speaks up in that same way and it's like look we know we

know that this like we know this is only killing people who fucking are addicted to refined carbohydrates yeah and and um so yeah and uh yeah it's a trip i just feel like sometimes i like when my mom says that i'm like i don't want to be mean to anyone i mean i want to be mean to some people but i don't want to be mean to anyone because I mean, I want to be mean to some people, but I don't want to be mean to anyone because they're obese. I don't care. That's like, you know. I know no one wants to be obese. Yeah, exactly.

And the only person that could do anything about it is that person. And like I think someone just said in the comments, there's a difference between being harsh and being mean and being a bully. Yeah. Like if you're saying, if you're going up to someone hey fat ass like um you're just a piece of shit like talking to like that yeah that's completely different we're not talking like that like right more like what you can encourage people is like especially if you go to crossfit and you have friends that are like hey man just come try out of class with me just try out of class and if they don't they don't but by saying that and encouraging people to come to the

class like they obviously know they're out of weight out of shape you know what i mean and they're going to give you every excuse under the under the sun but keep on going keep on like nudging them give them that nudge and um once in a while have that talk like hey buddy just so you know i read this article and like that shit that stuff you're eating is like you're killing yourself. Like let people know that. That's not – that's what being harsh is good. You know what I mean? Because you're –

Yes. I do. I think of it like this too. If I was running towards – and I use this example all the time. If I was running towards a cliff and I didn't see that it was a cliff and I was going to die, I would want someone to – like I would want someone to be like, hey, you dumb fuck. Like just scream at me, and I could stop. And there's some people who will be like, how dare you swear at me? But I'm not like that. I'm the kind of person who would say, what?

And then they would say, there's a cliff. You almost died. And I would say, thank you. you that's it that's all you would get from me thank you i'm so like when i'm driving and my wife's like watch out for that pedestrian like even if i saw them i'm like thank you like i'm not the kind of person who's like don't tell me how to drive like um so i so that's how i treat And, and I see that's exactly what's happening. Our whole society, like a huge chunk of our society is, is about to run off a cliff. If they haven't already. Yeah.

Well, it's going to, I think it's going to get really, really bad here in a minute. Yeah. Like in our, in our, in our lifetime, I think we're going to see something, a really catastrophic happen. Like, like, um, going to see something really catastrophic happen. Like, because of – just strictly because of diet. I think we're going to see something really, really, really – Well, do you ever see, like, that article that talks about, too, like, how much the testosterone has dropped in the last amount of years because of all the sugar that's been eaten and, like – Dude, there's – you can look up that kids who are super duper obese

like if you make your kid obese that's another crazy thing that it's crazy that the the that parents let their little kids get obese but um the boys boys testicles and penises won't drop if you if you feed them too much sugar at a young age and they'll and it's unrecoverable they never recover from that and it's because their parents poison them it's because their parents poison them and it's like i'm like like someone has to be like raise their hand and be like oh excuse me over here uh you're poisoning your kid how much and like this is just me like asking how much of everything is just so much lack of knowledge and like yes a big well no i think a big portion of it is

education i mean we live in this circle of i mean this is our life this is the education that we're around all the time and if you go outside of it to some of these other communities they don't so many so many parents can't say no i see such bad parenting yeah i see such i see so much bad parenting even from like the greatest parents i see so much fucking bad parenting just letting kids walk all over like man if they saw on the other side of it and i'll give this as a quick little testimony by listening my um aunt ignored her health for a very long time. And she, my aunt, and she hid it from all of us. And to the point where her legs started to swell so much, she had blisters that started to burst and everything else. And finally it came to the

surface of her ignoring her health. And now she's on dialysis and she got into a state where she's healthier to where she's more clear minded. And it's actually really sad because every time we call her, we have a check in with her and, you know, we have to advocate for her and different stuff with surgeries and stuff. Every single phone call ends with her crying. Oh man. And it's really hard and it's hard on all of us. And it would have, it would have been easier to be hard on her back then and forced ourself into that than it is now, because now she's, like I said, she's clear headed. And when we call it on her birthday or anything you know when she's trying to hide it you could hear trying to hide it on the phone and stuff and um it's really tough and i and i get that and like that's what's hard for me now is like knowing what i went through and

especially seeing family members of mine that are still obese and like and like I do the same thing I give them soft encouragements like we run like you know promos at the gym to send it over to them hey we're doing this this week or hey we're doing that um and a lot of times we'll get the whole like yeah I'm doing I'm trying this thing at my house like I started walking again like and that's all well and good and like I hope you stick to it but like a lot of us need a structure and someone to hold us accountable and i think a lot of people are so scared to hold people accountable because they don't want to hurt their feelings but um would you rather you know like now i'm at the point like now would you rather bury them or have them be mad at you

for yes yes yes once they come like the clarity once they finally do get in shape be like hey this is what he was doing for me like yeah like i would rather have my having those conversations with me couldn't have been easy for like she was my cousin who loved me to death but like to be able to have that conversation like jakey this is the stuff you're hey that's what's her name uh dan. She's the one that's on those pictures with like the transformation and stuff like that. And that's a special skill, by the way. Yeah.

She is. You would love her. So she is. I do love her. I saw her picture. I love her. If you walk into the, she walks into these doors at the gym and from the members to the children,

everyone's just like swarms to her she's like you know like flies on shit because she is just that that that beam of happiness when she walks in um happy to be here never like the girl never stops she does something for she's always doing something for someone always and um she's just that person it doesn't like she'll she'll take you being a little upset with her by incur if if she feels she needs to encourage you in a certain way you know what i mean and yeah it's a gift and she's not squandering it yeah yeah it's a gift and she's not squandering it she uh she she found crossfit through i don't know if she started before Dave or she really got serious about it with Dave about opening up their gym together

and stuff like that. Are they together? Are they a couple? Yeah, they're married. They just got married in September. Okay. But, yeah, they just are too like, you'd be as,

as, as passionate as you are about CrossFit, you'd be proud to come to this gym and see how the members and community is. And I firmly believe that. And they deserve all the recognition in the world for not just me but for I'm not just what's the name of the gym again?

RDT Fitness oh okay you're wearing the shirt are they not affiliated anymore? no they are so Dave's been doing it for I think 12 or 13 years now so he's definitely uh not too happy about the whole uh the whole situation going on with crossfit oh tell him to get another box of kleenex he got more coming uh um um one other thing I want to mention

I was just about to kick you off go ahead as far as these fad diets go I think one thing I want to tell people is that once you're what do you mean what's a fad diet tell me a fad diet

the Atkins, the Keto the Carnivore. These are all good things. What they all do is put you in a calorie deficit, which is what we're all after. So that's why we lose weight. But the fact of the matter is, is the diet never ends. And that's what I think the problem with a lot of our thinking is. They think that we're going to get to this destination that says I've made it and now I can eat whatever the fuck I want or do whatever the hell I want.

No, like you learn like my biggest advice would be learn the things that you enjoy that are healthy for you. Learn how to make them taste good. that are healthy for you, learn how to make them taste good, learn how to enjoy them on a daily basis. Because once you get to your, you know, your goal weight or whatever it is, the journey has just begun. That was losing weight for me was now looking back the easy part. Now it's the daily, you know, ins and outs of what i'm doing and why i'm doing it and learning to live with this body and what i can eat and how i can eat and the amount i need to work out you know what i mean it just it wasn't crossfit's a lifestyle methodology people are like oh it's a community it's a fitness program it's this that like because you listen it is a fucking they call it a cult for a reason it's a fucking religion it is a lifestyle that if that you have

to be super duper fierce and protect and uh and and yeah you're right it's never fucking especially as you get older you got you you don't you don't process food as well, and you move slower. So it's like constantly tweaking, constantly tweaking. The older you get, the harder, the longer you wait. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that too. I cannot imagine. I started when I was 34. How old were you when you started?

27, so I was very fortunate. Yeah. I can't imagine people – my mom didn't start until she was 69, and she's so stoked. She's been doing it over 10 years now and or almost 10 years and uh she'll she'll cry when she tells me oh my like and she's not really a crier she'll be like i can't believe that i found crossfit i'm so happy you introduced me to it yeah it's nuts i'm starting to hear that from my mom my mom's just turned 58 and so same same thing she's and i can't be like that's the kind of stuff that brings me joy now you know what i mean seeing other members and uh coaching them up and we have a couple people

here that are in their journey and i i love that i'm the one that like they get to come to and talk to about their weight and stuff like that because they have someone relatable at the gym you know what i mean that they're going through that same process so um yeah i've uh appreciate you letting me come on here this has been awesome this is uh tell my story it's been great yeah thanks for coming on i need to have more people like you on i need to have more people who've gone through i really do like yeah you do it like your podcast is amazing the cross everything amazing um every once in a while having that random guy who does i mean am i the lowest uh instagram followers you ever had i was yeah i refuse to even look at how few instagram followers you have

i know this guy is he's scraping the bottom of the bucket hey you know what's crazy too um jake and i'd be curious how this affects you when you as you get older even when i do like so i just started bench pressing again i hadn't bench pressed in years and i got my bench press right now yeah and i got my bench press out and uh i got a bench i um and i and i got the bar and i started doing um when i do cleans now uh i do curls i don't like pull i'll sometimes just do curls instead of like you know using the method that i was taught through CrossFit. But I just mix it with CrossFit. It's still like 10 calories on the assault bike, five bench press, 10 calories on the assault bike, and it's just – I'm so happy that I – you can just take this thing and just run with it to the day you die. Just incorporating little pieces.

You know what I mean? Like you can – it's okay. You know what I mean? It's okay. You can go back to curls. You can go back to lateral raises. You always have. It's evergreen. Say that again?

It's evergreen. Yeah. Just keep reinventing CrossFit for yourself. And to piggyback on what you said, yes, trying any diet is good. Yeah. Just try diets. Try diets. Keep it keep it's your body experiment with it find what you like but at the same time remember that like once you're on this you're on it like if you want to be successful you're going to stay on it and there's nothing wrong with that

there's nothing wrong with changing the way your diet is but like it almost it's not a diet like you say it's a lifestyle just there's no end lifestyle. Yeah. And like, yeah, no, learn your calories and know what your intake is. Like there's, I'm telling you there's nothing that goes in my mouth at this point in my life that I don't know how much calories it is. You know what I mean? Just, you know, I have that mental, I don't track it. Some days like I'll track just where I'm at just to see, but like mentally, I know every single day what amount is going into my body just because

i want to be continuing yes you know my favorite food in the world is ice cream and i probably need to and i haven't probably had ice cream in um i don't know how many years yeah and i used to eat it at least once a week and i don't miss it not at all all. Not at all. It's a trip. Uh, but I'm also, I'm 49. Maybe my taste buds have changed too, but like, I don't miss it. Same with like drinking alcohol. Like I don't miss, like I go through long periods without drinking and I don't miss alcohol either, but, but it's crazy. Cause you'll tell some people, Hey, you're going to have to stop drinking. And they'll be like, I could never stop. Or like, Hey, you know, a time will come in your life where you can't eat ice cream, you know, once a week.

And they're like, no, I'll always do that. And it's, I get that feeling, but Savant, does that bottle breacher fit in your mouth? No, Jake, but your mom, this one, this one still smells like your mom, buddy. This one right here. Let me, this one, let me see. Oh no, I'm sorry.

This one does, sorry. Yeah, thank you. Let me, this one, let me see. Oh no, I'm sorry. This one does. Sorry. Thank you. How dare you. That's half the show is these comments that I get to hear. I just love your mom jokes. Someone wrote in the comments the other day, how embarrassing a 50 year old man still likes your mom jokes. I'm a the comments the other day, how embarrassing a 50-year-old man still likes your mom jokes.

Thank you, Jake. I love you. They should be embarrassed. Jake just does that on purpose just to help set me up. He threw me an alley-oop. Yeah, I think a lot of the comments. Thank you. They poke, so you respond. Yeah, they just want to see a 5'5 guy dunk.

All right, Jake. Thank you, buddy. Yeah jake uh thank you buddy yeah thank you and i'll honestly thank you for doing your part in the world everyone has to do their part and um you know sometimes i'll celebrate people who had weight loss and someone in the comments will say some dumb shit like uh well fuck that guy he that's what he should have done all along no actually that person's actually doing everyone an enormous favor for making that journey and letting us witness it. It's like you really don't know the favor you've done for the world.

Every time someone compliments you, there's 10 people talking behind your back, Jake, who are like, oh my God, that guy used to be fat. And that's what you want to hear. Let's just pray people are pointing to you without you knowing a thousand times a day. Oh, they are. It's great.

Yeah. Oh, dude. Because it's the... In the back of my head, I'm like, yeah. Watch it. Yeah. You're the guy at Starbucks who they were making fun of for just sitting there with pencil and paper drawing all the time

and he finally sold one of his drawings for a million bucks yep you know what i mean or or who's the lady who wrote the um who's the lady who's a who's like a maybe a billionaire now the author they made all the movies jk rowling yeah jk rowling she's fucking poor on welfare writing in a fucking cafe like you're that guy yep you're the guy that did something that yeah and so thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. And thanks for letting me put it out there.

This was awesome. Yeah. Great stuff. The liver king would say ice cream is not a food. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. That guy is fucking awesome.

Isn't he? Yeah. I love him. I want him to cuddle me.